I think it'll be quite a while before I get to enjoy the results of grinding. I never play this game in long goes (unlike other TES games) as the grinding can get a bit tiring. Even still I 'm really enjoying it

Where are you, Vital? What province?

High Rock, still. Wind Keep to be precise, near the Hammerfell border.

Hey does anybody know where Arena puts character saves? On my comp I'm seeing this...

C: \\ Program Files (x86) \\ Bethesda Softworks \\ Arena \\ Arena...

that last Arena folder is packed with files, but I can't tell which ones (if any) are saves. I'm going to transfer my saves to a different computer so I won't have to start the game all over again.

Never mind, I went ahead and started all over again at the beginning. This time Renee Gade I has found a battleaxe. She's also chosen Battlemage for a class instead of Warrior, which is what I chose on my old PC.

mirocu, can I sometimes post my stories from Morrowind in this thread?

Renee, did you find where those saves are? I don´t remember but I can check so you know next time So you started over, huh?


I decided it´s way overdue for Morrowind to have its own CU thread anyway, so I went ahead and fired it up so feel free to go nuts there!

Cool, I'm excited you'll be posting some MW stuff here, Lopov.



I was trying to figure it, it seemed like saves can't just be cut & pasted like they can in later games. I read something about needing to mess with the hex editor, and that's as far as I got. [censored] that. I'll just start over. *shrugs*

So yeah, I started a new game, but it's still RG1 at the helm. I am glad she's Battlemage instead of a Warrior. Having the ability to heal up makes all the diff. RG1 has (so far) managed to...

1). Find a general store in the town of Amol. She sold her battleaxe along with a 'Mark" (whatever that is), and a couple other items from the starting dungeon. The Mark earned her quite a bit gold, somewhere over 400 gp. That's way more than anything which can be sold from Oblivion or Skyrim's beginnings, the difference is that Arena also has a steeper learning curve. It's a tougher game, so surviving the Tutorial feels more rewarding.

2). RG1 also found a temple and healed herself up.

3). She found the Mage's Guild, and bought a couple Stamina potions, along with a Light spell.


I recently did some reading about the early days of Bethesda, which is pretty fascinating. Arena was supposed to have shipped for the Xmas '93 season but the small staff of Beth was having some difficulties, so the game didn't ship until March of '94. Only 3,000 copies initially were produced I think, and it looked as if it would go nowhere. But every month people kept buying it, its reputation spread by word-of-mouth mostly. Thank goodness, otherwise we'd all be playing something else

@Renee - The Arena savegames can be copied and pasted just as easily as with the other games. You´ll find them in the main directory, scroll down and you´ll find them somewhere in the list. They are called SAVEGAME.00 - SAVEGAME.09

And thanks for the brief Beth history lesson

Awesome I found the saves ye speketh of. And you are welcome about the history lesson. I also learned that during Arena's day, there were literally dozens of other RPGs out there. Some were great, some were mediocre, some were gems but they did not get noticed by the masses. A lot of games flopped, which drove gaming studios out of business during the '90s.

But nobody had made something on the scale of Arena. There wasn't really anything new in Arena: several other games also had 3D, 1st person perspective, and things and people you could interact with, and also full-fledged stat / class systems. But none of these others were as massive as Arena. And this is the part that early TES gamers must have been wowed about the most... like wow, I can go anywhere and do anything?

I'll have to post a link to the article I read yesterday at work.

Imagine coming from Wolf3D or Doom where you can only run and shoot, to a game where you can talk to people, buy and sell things, get rich and powerful and maybe even bother to go fetch the emperor. Minds must have been so blown indeed!

If it were possible to play A & D in the 3rd person, I'd definitely try them. But being forced to play in the 1st person doesn't appeal to me, also I get dizzy if I turn around a lot.

Thanks for the history lesson Renee

I vaguely remember hearing some of that information before but I can't remember where :lol :

I think people loved Arena and Daggerfall for their lore and open world. From what I know these games were much more setting based than other RPGs of their era and this gained them the cult following that ultimately made Bethesda a mainstream success.

Also I just realised that Arena was actually meant to be an arena game where you travel around Tamriel and fight other gladiator teams. It's probably common knowledge among you guys but I had no idea As the developers out more detail into the world and gave more options for exploration and side quests it became an RPG. They kept the name 'Arena' because they'd already marketed it as that. Then they came up with the whole "everyone calls Tamriel the Arena because it's so dangerous" thing.. If you go in the wiki it will often tell you the intended name for each city's Gladiator team.

And I also realised that the Arena cover is used as a poster for the Arena in Oblivion

mirocu: Doom is mentioned several times during that article (which I can't find now, of course) as one of the better games. I know it's one of your faves, right?



Yeah, and by the time Daggerfall came out, Bethesda had a good many fans waiting for it, so it was an instant hit. The only problems people had in those days was (obviously) tons of bugs, and also the fact that some gamers didn't have computers that could even load up the game! .. imagine that. But from what I've read, ALL games (especially RPGs) were buggy back then, and since the Internet was still rather new, it wasn't like anybody could DL a patch that took care of things.

The next 2 games that came out (Redguard and ... I forget the other one) weren't very successful, plus they weren't as 'open world' as Arena and DF, and because of this Bethesda was about to go bankrupt. But Bethesda's founder was a board member at Zenimax, and managed to bail the company out with fat pockets. Beth had to get it right for Morrowind, otherwise they'd be out of business for good. So thank goodness MW is such a great game.

This concludes today's history lesson. And there will be a pop quiz.


Yup, all of this is canon.

The poster is similar but it's not exactly the same. Anyway, that was interesting to read about Beth's history, thanks Renee.

Speaking of Doom, it was one of the first games that me and my older brother played together, and we really liked it. It was difficult and scary at times, but we played it almost constantly until we finished it.

I saw the same vid about Bethesda's history as Renee. I think it was this one, that actually has five parts. It is almost an hour altogether, but well worth the time. It is a fascinating look into not just one of our favorite game developers, but also just a peek under the hood at how the industry in general works.

Like Renee said, Morrowind basically saved the company from bankruptcy. But it was Oblivion that really put the company on the map as a AAA developer, and of course Skyrim cemented it's position as a pop culture icon.

Oh actually the history lessons that I found were strictly text. Some website. Hold on, I think I can find it in a minute. But that's cool seeing that there's also a series of vids to watch. I'm going to do so in a few.

Here is an interview with one of Arena's devs, and here is a basic article which is also a good read. There is also this series of pages, which talks about the climate Arena was released into. Other games and studios, and what happened to them.

Isn't it wild that the guy who started Bethesda (Christopher Weaver) had what seems to be a 0% background in gaming? .. That blows my mind. He worked in government, and also in television, before starting his own computer games company out of the blue. He and some other early Beth employees were also responsible for creating the engine which the very first edition of John Madden football would use. EA (creator of John Madden) would basically rip-off Bethesda somehow, so Bethesda actually tried to sue EA for 7 million dollars. That's so crazy-awesome.

I get the feeling that by the time Arena was in production that Chris Weaver was probably only a minor player, if he was involved at all. He's never mentioned in any text I've read, except early on when Bethesda was mostly making sports games, and later on when he bailed Beth out from bankruptcy.

So... does anyone have an update on either game?

Well I've only played Benethor a little and he's basically been going into people's houses and killing monsters to grind. I'm not sure the rogue is a brilliant class because he dies alot, it's incredibly frustrating... He doesn't so much damage it seems and he has little health and no magic. I have spent so much gold on healing potions Also the whole stealth thing isn't great, I've leveled up his intelligence, agility and willpower but he still can rarely open locked door..

This game is tough

It is tough but it probably will get easier. My character can withstand and kill almost anything by now but it was a long way to this point and I also have spent sooo much gold on restore health and magicka potions!

What level is he now?

Nine... Or ten..

I'll have to check

But yes, I'm sure he'll get better

He´s just a kid then! Get him up to 25-ish and he´ll be fine. Probably..

I think my own character is still in Skyrim. He´s ready to take on the MQ, he just needs me a little bit..

'rocu.... MQ...





I was thinking I needed him about Lvl 20 before he sets out

Ooh, a journalistic update! Nice one, Renee!

A journal - how nice. I love the spelling mistakes too, they fit the story. Damn, you guys make me want to play Arena.

I make me wanna play Arena too!

That's something I got the sense of while 'she' was writing it. For some reason I see this young, 18 to 20-year old girl wanting to start a journal, but she's not entirely educated. She's good with weapons, and also a fledgling spellcaster, but hasn't had time to perfect her writing skills.

Back in the middle ages only some royalty or the religious (monks and such) were truly educated. Renee Gade has had some education, but not the sort where her folks send her away to some monastery for years and she comes out like a sage or a scribe.

Renee's very first quest completed folks! It's a random quest. I gotta say, finding the Mage's guild wasn't that hard because I've been marking everything on the map, but finding the correct INN was getting frustrating. There's so many damn inns in the town she's in (which is Amol). I've marked several of these on the map, but they all say "INN". So she visited over a half dozen of these inns. Finally she found an inn which was not marked, and this was the correct one.

This is a small victory for both of us because in the original Arena game on my old comp we couldn't get any quests to work for some reason.



She managed to kill a lizard man, two goblins, and a rat. Those were rather easy, but then she came across a wizard. Her first one. The guy didn't use any spells, ironically it was Renee who managed to hit him with a fire dart. She also used her broadsword to take the wizard down, but by the time she did this she had already healed herself twice, and her Magicka was gone. So it's a good thing she 'kilt' him before he kilt her.

Her first quest done! They grow up so fast, don´t they..?

Renee, do you mark the inns and other places by writing the names yourself? There is a feature where you can right-click ( I think) on a door to an inn/shop etc in the game and it will mark its full name on your map

Nice story Renee, it's good to hear that Renee is doing fine. Can you loot armor or clothes from NPCs in Arena?

You can indeed, Lopov

You can loot whatever they have which usually is low-grade armour and weapons. Sometimes they have potions and other misc objects too.

I didn't do this in my original game (couldn't figure out how) but in the new game I have been doing this. Makes things much more convenient because Arena's towns are waaaaay more confusing and 'generic' than those found in later games. It's amazing I used to think Bruma or Windhelm (in OB and Sky, respectively) were confusing.

But note to self: if I ever get any more random quests, I need to start writing 'quest' next to the inn where I got the quest.


Sometimes. So far, most of the things she has found are near-useless. A daggar here, a few gold there. Most enemies carry nothing at all, which explains why they wind up wandering into towns I suppose.

The only significant items she's found are an Elven Amulet which lowers her Armor Class by -1, and a couple of "Marks" worth over 400 gold each. But all of these were found in the starter dungeon. Maybe she should go back there and try to get some better loot, but I can't find the place now because when she left the Tutorial she was pretty freaked out, and simply wanted to run towards the newest inn.

Yeah, she's rolling now! RG is really getting the hang of random Arena quests. It's easy to make money in this game, and there's lots to do that is actually non-violent. In this case, all she did was (1) pick up a tip from a townsperson that somebody in the Dirty Pit Inn needs an escort. (2) Found this person. She wanted to go to the Mage's Guild (3). RG1 takes her to Mage's Guild *boom* that's 80 gold. The entire quest was done within an hour or two.

Yeah you can plow through four-five quests in a day that way and you don´t even need to talk to people. All you gotta do is walk into random inns and try to talk to the inn keeper. If one inn doesn´t work just go to the next

Yeah, so Renee got a tip to visit the palace, where the Baroness lady (or queen or whoever she's supposed to be) up above gave my battlemage a quest, but this quest involved traveling 58 days away to some cave. The reward was only 160 gold, and I got the sense that RG1 did not want to do this. It's too far away.

Between me and her, I'd like to see her keep building up her gold and her XP right here in Amol. I've been watching some Let's Plays of Arena, and by golly some of those dungeons are tough out there. So I won't mind if RG1 keeps hanging out in Amol, and even becomes somewhat of an Uber.

The Let's Play I've been watching is by a British guy named Shellibix, if you're interested. It's funny because Shellibix jumps right into the MQ without buffing up his toon at all! ... As a result, he gets pwned over and over again once he's out in some dungeon.

Your experience with Arena is very similar to my own, Renee. I also opted out on a baron quest because I felt my character wasn´t ready by a long shot. I decided I´d rather lose that quest and just deal with it instead of doing what I was told. Interestingly enough, when after that long shot he finally was ready, it wasn´t too late to do the quest!

Getting your character stronger by doing what you´re doing is imo a very good idea before tackling dungeons and whatnot. Btw, isn´t it awesome that shield spells aren´t limited by time!?

Shield spells aren't limited by time? What do you mean? You can cast a shield spell and it lasts for hours? Wow, Rg's gonna have to get that. So far her spellbook includes the default healing and Fire Dart spells for Battlemages, and she's managed to buy Orc Strength and Light as well.

It was funny when RG turned down that quest the Baroness lady was like "You young Nords today are so unambitious!" That cracked me up.

If I´m not mistaken, shield spells are active as long as they´re not depleted. In other words, they only decrease when you´re taking hits

My Arena gal has made it to Level 6, and has an even 600 gold at the moment. I dumped a point into Personality (she's always chatting with people, after all), a point into Strength, 2 into Intelligence I think, one into Endurance, and one into Willpower. She's pretty well-rounded with the stats, methinks.

Even though her game is not officially dead-is-dead, it's been awhile since we've had a death. She can heal herself, and also doesn't go outside at night unless she's got at least 3 potions, either for Magicka or Health.

She´s coming along fine, I see. Taking on the MQ and all And I did just the same when Thor was young; never went out at night without those potions. I really need to come back into his game but I reckon that won´t happen until fall.

Why? Because that´s when I started to play Arena last year and I´m a Creature of Habit Extraordinaire™ and if I start out playing in a certain way I have to keep playing like that if I don´t want the feel for the game to disappear

There's no magicka regen, so you gotta have some backup potions, just in case.

Definitely

Btw, what´s the worst monster you´ve encountered so far?

Lol pick one! .. I'd say nightblades and wizards are pretty tough. And skeletons are surprisingly tough. OMG no more one-hit kills there.

I'm not sure how leveling works in this game, do a lot of enemies level with the player like in Oblivion? I kinda don't think so, and hope not. I don't want to be losing almost all my character's health at higher levels over one damn skeleton.

I've been playing a little bit of Arena every night (literally a half-hour to an hour) and Renee managed to find her first dungeon, just outside of Amol. The very first enemy was a skeleton, which nearly pwned her, but she managed to defeat it. Then a nightblade showed up. By now, her potions had shrunk to just a couple, so she got the hell out of there.

Another weird thing is last night I was looking at the way fast-travel works. It's weird because the nearest town is Winterhold. In Skyrim (TES 5) getting from where Amol is to where Winterhold is would only take an hour or so of Earth time, but apparently this takes much longer in Arena if you try to walk there without FTing. It's like proportions of distances are much greater or something. I read on some wiki site that somebody tried to walk between a couple of towns in some province (not Skyrim, some other province) and he was still walking 10 hours later!

Daggerfall had the longest travel times, I think. There were quests that had a month's time limit that were hard to achieve in that time because the travel took too long if you were "cautious", and you'd get ambushed if you weren't. Ten game hours would be a really short trip to the next town.

Hah, that's interesting. Daggerfall's going to be interesting in general, simply because it's way more complex than Arena (or any other ES game from what I'm hearing)

There´s no scaling in Arena so you don´t have to worry about that, Renee. On the other hand stronger enemies will appear as you level up but at higher levels you´ll easily kill lizard men, skeletons etc with just a few hits.

Unless you put all points in Personality of course...

Edit: Manuals are now available in the Download and Instructions OP

Yeah and he'd still be walking a million hours later. Arena is the only game in the series where you cannot walk from one town to the next. You can shuffle through the landscape endlessly and you can find little settlements and dungeons and farms and all that, but you can't actually arrive at any location on the map. It just keeps generating random stuff for you to explore.

In Daggerfall, you could spend stupid amounts of time just walking, but in the end you'd arrive someplace. If you weren't walking towards the edge of the "world" map, that is.

Concerning the worst enemies, that's clearly undead warlocks. They kick the living crud outa ya before you even know they're there. They're real bad. Of course, there's ways to cope with that, too, but the first time you meet one of those suckers? Bad. Oh, and vampires. Generally, all fleshy undead are really bad news.

No enemy is a real problem for my character nowadays thanks to his high-leveled Absord/Reflect Magic and Shield spells. Just gotta pay attention to when they´ve either run out or been depleted...

Did you ever fight Jager Tharn? The first time I did I fought him for like an hour or so, until he was finally dead. It was only then I discovered there was something I should've picked up....

No I haven´t started the MQ yet. I imagine he´s tougher than the monsters I´ve fought up until now, though.